Dawn Stewardson - Wild Action

With that, she slowly walked over to the bear and scratched him behind the ear.

“You still okay?” she asked, looking at Nick once more.

“Sure,” he said. In truth, of course, he was as far from okay as he could ever remember being. He couldn’t keep his eyes off those claws, and he couldn’t stop thinking a scratch from them would make one of Blackie’s feel like a pinprick.

Carly rubbed the bear’s nose for a minute, then said, “Attila, that’s Nick over there. I want you to go and say hello to him. Two feet.”

The bear glared over again. Then he pushed himself up onto his hind feet—sending a rush of utter terror through Nick. Standing up, he looked like an enormous sumo wrestler in a fur coat.

“Good boy,” Carly said. “Now go say hello.”

Attila gave a little snort and started toward Nick, stopping a couple of feet away. Nick stood stock-still, even though the urge to run was almost overwhelming. In his cowboy boots, he was well over six feet tall, but the bear’s eyes were level with his. And it was so close he could smell its earthy scent and hear it breathing.

“Nick?” Carly whispered. “Say hello to him.”

He swallowed hard. “Hello, Attila.”

The bear eyed him for another second, then took a final step forward, wrapped its arms around him and began squeezing him to death.

“CARLY, I can’t breathe!”

She was so thrilled to see that Attila liked Nick, his words didn’t register for a second. Then she realized Attila was getting carried away with his bear hug.

“Attila, enough,” she said. When he didn’t stop, she felt a flutter of concern. An enthusiastic bear was hardly the same as an enthusiastic puppy. “You tell him, Nick,” she quickly suggested. “Enough is the command, and be firm.”

“Enough,” he said, sounding more strangled than firm.

Miraculously, Attila grunted and backed off. Dropping to all fours, he began snuffling the leg of Nick’s jeans.

Carly almost jumped for joy. If Attila was going to listen to Nick, things just might work out.

“He obeyed you!” she said excitedly.

“Obeyed me? He practically killed me!”

“No he didn’t. He was being friendly.” And she was so relieved. She hadn’t told Nick about the phone call, because she hadn’t wanted him feeling even more stressed when he met Attila, but now she could.

Before she had a chance, though, he took a backward step and said, “Listen, if that’s his way of being friendly, I sure as hell don’t want to be near him when he’s being grouchy. This isn’t going to work, Carly. We’ve got to figure out some way of making him listen to you better.”

“Give him his chicken.”

“What?”

She pointed at the pail. “Give him his chicken or he will be grouchy.”

Nick grabbed the pail, then turned back toward her. “I just put it down in front of him?”

“You could. But if you feed him by hand, it’ll help the two of you bond.”

“Bond? Did you go deaf in the past minute? I said this isn’t going to work. I’m not… comfortable close to this animal. You’re going to have to handle him.”

“Nick, do you want Jay Wall to be happy with us or not?”

“Of course I do. I just don’t want to work with a bear.”

“Well, it could take months to figure out how to get him to listen to me better. And the chemistry’s obviously right between you two.”

“No. It was right between him and Gus. I’m wearing Gus’s clothes, remember, so it’s his scent on them—his chemistry. And what happens after they get washed?”

“Well, maybe there are enough of his things to last through the filming.”

“Not a chance. His closet’s practically empty. And after I wear something once or twice, there’ll be more of my scent on it than Gus’s. How will Attila take to that?”

Carly told herself he’d be okay with it, but she knew it might be a problem.

“Maybe the scent’s not really important,” she said hopefully. “Maybe it’s your deep voice Attila responded to. I mean, he did what you told him even though you didn’t sound very authoritative.”

“What do you mean I didn’t sound authoritative? I’ve been trained to sound authoritative. And the bear listened, didn’t he?”

“My point exactly.”

Attila woofed; Nick’s gaze flashed to him.

“He wants his chicken.”

As Nick looked down at the pail, then back at her, Carly prayed he wouldn’t simply turn and walk away. But she could hardly blame him if he did. Wild Action might mean everything to her, but it meant little to him. And even though she was certain Attila wouldn’t harm him, he obviously wasn’t.

“Nick,” she said at last, “I know how much I’m asking of you, but if you’ll try working with him I’ll be right there every minute. And…Look, I hate to put even more pressure on you, but Jay called while you were changing into Gus’s clothes. The cast and crew will be arriving before lunchtime tomorrow. And the way things stand, your working with Attila is the only hope we’ve got.”

NICK HAD WASHED HIS hands half a dozen times, but he could still smell the raw chicken on them. He could also still feel Attila’s smooth warm tongue licking them.

But hell, while he’d been feeding the bear he hadn’t been sure how much longer he’d have hands, so maybe he should count his blessings.

Of course, tomorrow he’d be right back in the lion’s den—or the bear’s field, as the case might be— even though he was probably insane to be going along with Carly’s plan. He looked across the kitchen to where she was stirring the spaghetti sauce, wondering exactly how she’d convinced him to do something he seriously didn’t want to do.

Then he recalled how her smile had lit up her entire face when he’d agreed to try working with the bear. It was, he’d discovered, a very dangerous smile, because it made him feel strangely warm inside. Which, in turn, made him tend to forget all about her negative qualities.

Obviously he was going to have to be even more careful around her than he’d realized.

“That salad almost ready?” she asked, glancing over.

“Uh-huh.”

“Almost ready?” Crackers repeated from his perch in the solarium.

“Yeah, almost ready,” Nick told him, thinking the house was very full of animals. He’d probably hardly notice the three cats if they were the extent of the menagerie, but he’d be a while getting used to those huge Marx brothers flopped all over the floor. And to a big blue bird that talked. Especially when Carly’d said it could amputate a man’s hand.

Every time he looked at Crackers, he found himself wondering if he should find a pair of heavy work gloves to wear while he was here. Between that beak and Attila’s teeth…

“There’s something I’ve been forgetting to ask you,” Carly said.

He looked over at her again.

“You don’t have any orange clothes, do you?”

“No, why?”

“Oh, I just wanted to check. Fruit and vegetables are okay, but for some reason anything else orange makes Crackers a little nutsy.”

When she didn’t elaborate, Nick decided he didn’t want to know what a macaw did when it got nutsy. So, instead of asking, he began mentally running through the list of Attila’s commands and hand signals once more—feeling as if he were cramming for finals. In the past couple of hours, he’d learned enough about bears to fill an encyclopedia on them.

The entire time he’d trooped along with Carly, helping her tend to the outdoor animals, she’d told him about bears’ behavior in general and Attila’s behavior in particular.